Downtown Asheville buildings coming down

9:35 PM,
Mar. 14, 2014

A piece of heavy equipment gets ready to take a bite out of the former Flying Frog Cafe building on Haywood Street in downtown Asheville Friday morning as part of a project to remove it and an adjoining building from the city-owned property across from the U.S. Cellular Center. A worker sprays water on the work site to keep down dust.

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Workers began tearing apart the former Flying Frog Cafe building Friday morning, part of the job of removing two dilapidated buildings on Haywood Street across from U.S. Cellular Center.

The job of demolishing that building and the former Handipark parking garage next door is scheduled to be completed in about two weeks, said John Gavin, project manager for city government. It will take another two weeks for workers to erect retaining walls and stabilize the site, he said.

The city has owned the land the buildings sit on for several years and had planned to sell it for use as a hotel site. That ...